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Antechamber Index, The
No discussion of the Conflation of the Spires would be complete with at least passing mention of the Antechamber Index, a— or perhaps the—''seminal work of the period. Penned in the Fourth Cycle of Conflation, this slim volume is the product of the chicanery that at the time was rampant in the undercrofts of the Leeward and Salt-Stained Spires. Rival gangs of imps— their names have been lost to us, though several contemporary sources refer to them as 'gods-bedamned wretches'—a bizarrely universal epitaph— occupied both of these spires, dwelling in the cellars and undercrofts and preying on the bargemen who plied the sunken canal that ran through the foundations of the Leeward and Salt-Stained Spires while they were being conflated. These gangs of imps would descend on a barge, assault the bargemen with blinding but largely harmless sacks of rime coral or Pliny's Bat guano, and then plunder whatever goods the barge was ferrying, carrying them off to their squalid and dismal lairs (For more on the practice of barge robbery, and on the canal system itself, seek out that estimable treatise on the subject aptly titled ''Canalways of the Subspires). These rival gangs of imps, always seeking the best plunder and eager to raid a barge before their counterparts could get at it, often sallied forth from their own spire undercrofts to try and practice their robbery in their rival's territory— territories that, as the two spires were conflated more and more with each other, began to overlap to an increasingly large extent. This was all well and good as long as the spires remained at least ''slightly separate— so long as they were separate, the imps were content to skirmish ineffectually and rob bargemen when the opportunity arose; once the two spires were largely one, the two gangs were confronted with a new enemy: the bizarre and nonsensical architecture that was now their home. In particular, the Winged Buttress (see Winged Buttress, The,' an utterly loathsome account that has the great fortune of being the only writing on the subject— otherwise no one in their right mind would read it) was a great hazard, confusing and preying on the imps'.' Unable to navigate this new, conflated spire, the two gangs of imps— each independently at first, and then in conjunction once they realized that they could no longer even find bargemen to be territorial about— began to try mapping their new home. The product of that heroic effort was ''The Antechamber Index',''' ''a detailed atlas of the rooms and chambers of the Leeward and Salt-Stained Spires, and of their new relations to each other during the spire's conflation. Sadly for the imps, much of the detail I mention is blatantly erroneous; much more of it is the sort of detail only imps care about, including the odours of innumerable carpets, the various curses carved by builders into joists hidden behind the walls, and the locations of rats that might be good for eating. Even so, the ''Index ''is a valuable treatise containing much that is of use, and for the next three cycles of Conflation it was the only available guide to the Spires ~Bartholomew the Elder, Second Penmaster of Verdais.Category:A